Posted: Sun Mar 18, 2007 6:12 pm Post subject: David Perry's version of The Jungle Book

Back in the day, I remember feeling that the released 16-bit versions of The Jungle Book had a similar feel to Aladdin but at the same time just didn't seem so great, as if they were just an attempt at re-using the engine without the same team behind the project.

Well, today I've just learned that this game had at one point been assigned to the pre-Shiny team but then scrapped in favor of the safer bet Aladdin was. Here's an excerpt from an interview at sega-16.com:

David Perry wrote:

I think my favorite was Aladdin as our team was new on Global Gladiators/Cool Spot, and so I think we hit our stride on Aladdin. We were actually working on Disney's Jungle Book at the time, and I was very proud of our progress, then Aladdin was suddenly dropped into our lap (by Sega) as an emergency project, so I nabbed some of the Jungle Book ideas/code and that got Aladdin up and running really fast.

David Perry wrote:

As I mentioned earlier I was working on Jungle Book, then kind of raided it to get Aladdin done in time. Virgin then asked me to go back and finish up Jungle Book. There was some dispute as to what it should be, now that it's heart had been removed, and Virgin just pushed to "get it done". At that same time, I got my Green card and so I could legally form a corporation in the USA. So that's what I did and Shiny got going almost immediately. (That's now nearly 12 years ago.)

By looking at the credits in the final game, the only familiar Shiny names I could see were David Perry as "game designer" (which might just refer to the very first game concepts), and Doug TenNapel as the animator. Also, some sources like Wikipedia have a "Disney's The Jungle Book (Movie License - Not Completed), Virgin Games Ltd." entry within the games Dave has worked on, which makes it seem that it's not just a case of licensing his game engine.

I guess the game was handed to that "Eurocom Entertainment" company listed in the credits once the gameplay had already been finished (as you can see some elements that were later included in Aladdin and even Earthworm Jim 2) but, in my opinion, the game does indeed feel as if they just took the prototype code and "got it done" quick, and just doesn't feel as polished as other 16-bit works by Perry.

So, is there any additional info on this? Or has anybody ever seen any screens from the original project?

EDIT: Also, I wonder if there's a similar story behind the Lion King game...

Last edited by ICEknight on Wed Jul 20, 2016 2:44 am; edited 4 times in total

Just to keep these things documented in the same place, here's a little bit more info on the development of this game, from the other side of the story:

Quote:

By the end of 1992, Eurocom had expanded and diversified and we started working on Gameboy, Master System, PC & 3D0. We were approached by Virgin Interactive who had a Jungle Book game in development on Genesis/Megadrive but things weren't going well and they were looking for an external team to take over the project and get it finished. Not having much to lose and because we saw it as a good opportunity to springboard onto the then new 16-bit platforms (Genesis/Megadrive and SNES - although we didn't actually do the SNES version of this game) we jumped in with both feet. On the back of successfully finishing the project we had a 16-bit feather in our caps and were able to expand the company and move forward. It was a turning point for Eurocom - a real make-or-break moment.

I didn't get to do the audio for the Genesis/Megadrive version because it had already been done. However, we were also asked by Virgin if we could produce 8-bit versions of the game too so out came the NES and Gameboy tools again.

One proto that I already dumped is an E3 build, which came from a US magazine, so I guess if you figure out when exactly did the handing over happen and compare it with the E3 date you could tell if it's before or after.

Now, what's really interesting, is that I got a batch of Virgin prototypes not so long ago. There are three Jungle Book builds there, I think. I actually started dumping them today. This topic makes it all the more interesting, I wonder how it might differ, if it changed development teams.

Now, sorry to disappoint, but no Lion King or Aladdin (except a build of Aladdin NES, which was crap).

Here's a really interesting article by Sega-16 on the making of Virgin Games' Aladdin, which also speaks of how The Jungle Book was postponed and ultimately abandoned once Shiny was formed (even though it still doesn't go into detail on how much work Eurocom did on it or the old finished stuff they may have scrapped):

It even mentions the DynoBlaze prototype at one point and... Blue Sky's version of Aladdin! I don't think any info on it has ever surfaced outside of this article?

EDIT:
Also, regarding how the pre-Eurocom version of The Jungle Book may have looked like, there could be some hints to it in the Winter CES prototype which drx mentioned earlier in this topic, seeing how it shows a different HUD that actually shares more similarities with Aladdin's.